Conversations
by birsima
Summary: Sequel to Study session. After her conversation with Phantom, Maddie needs more answers and seeks him out again.
1. Chapter 1

After her surprisingly successful session questioning Phantom, Maddie had started to look at the ghosts plaguing Amity Park with different eyes. Sure, she still believed they were a menace and could not be trusted, but they weren't inherently evil and hell-bent on destroying the city, at least not all of them. She had begun to observe them as people, instead of human behavior patterns and emotions imprinted on ectoplasm. They still weren't people, oh no, but Maddie had found her daughter's way of studying ghosts fruitful.

The more human-like ghosts had personalities, traits, and mannerisms, though not to the same extent as humans. And Phantom, as Maddie had to keep reminding herself. Phantom really was something different entirely.

His personality had more sides to it than any other ghost, he had more detail in his appearance, and he was more powerful than almost anything coming through the portal. He was an enigma, one Maddie had tried to solve almost since his first appearance. At least now, she had more information about him than ever before: her notes and observations from their session.

Currently, Maddie was leafing through said notes for the umpteenth time within a week. She was comparing them to notes she had made of other commonly reappearing ghosts, such as the one claiming to be 'The Box Ghost' and the metallic hunter ghost known as 'Skulker'. None of the other ghosts showed signs of being 'portalborns', as she had decided to call Phantom and any other possible ghost that might have died in similar conditions.

Maddie paused her page skimming to a leaf with an attempt of drawing Phantom's face in detail to help her remember more later when transcribing her notes on a computer. She hadn't, she'd been busy. While the drawing wasn't good in any way, it gave her an idea.

Ghosts had been people once. People left records behind when they died. Phantom couldn't have died more than eleven years ago, which would make him ridiculously overpowered comparing to his age, but he had apparently died in a portal similar to the Fenton portal. According to Phantom, someone else had stolen their blueprints for the portal, and since the blueprints had existed in complete form for twelve years now and Maddie couldn't possibly imagine anyone, even with a professional and well-equipped team, building one in less than a year, eleven years was the maximum time she believed was possible for another portal to have existed.

That roughly translated into there being a possibility of finding Phantom's records from when he was alive.

Maddie almost leaped out of the office chair she was sitting in the lab, the very same she had questioned Phantom from a week earlier, and into a far less comfortable one in front of a computer with enough exposed wires to make her lose custody of her children if child services ever found it. Of course, Jazz was beyond legal drinking age and Danny too was technically an adult, so the threat of losing her children because of a computer was almost on the negative.

Despite its suspicious appearance, the computer was fast and well-connected. After a few lessons of 'handling the internet for those born before the 90's' in the library later, so was Maddie in her research as her fingers glided over the keyboard. Despite her efficiency, the sheer amount of male teenagers either dead or missing from a few state area between the last eleven and five years was massive. Judging by the somewhat local accent Maddie had picked up from the ghost's echoing voice, he couldn't have been from any further than Michigan, though her hypothesis was Wisconsin, since that particular state had slightly more ghost activity than the other surrounding states, and Phantom couldn't possibly have died in their portal. She and Jack would've known if someone died in their portal. And while Phantom hadn't exactly said it, he had heavily implied it was somewhere else.

After an all-nighter of going through death reports and missing person announcements, Maddie was no closer to finding Phantom's original identity. She buried her face in her hands, black latex gloves discarded on the table next to an empty coffee cup. She had read every single article she had found fitting her search, and after she had run out of those, she had excluded gender from her search. Not everybody's identities necessarily match the gender the news reported their deaths as.

Maddie decided to seek out Phantom again, but not before getting a good day's sleep. She needed to be well awake to find the ever-elusive ghost who, while appearing at all times of the day, was in general more active during night time like all ghosts tended to be and thus more easily found then. Of course, had Maddie been less tired she would've been out of the house chasing the monochrome specter in the blink of an eye but as it was, she collected her coffee-stained mug and trudged up the lab stairs with heavy feet. Once in the kitchen, she was surprised to see her son sitting on the table, nursing his own cup of apparently iced coffee and looking as lively as one could describe a disgruntled chameleon being. Maddie glanced at the clock on the wall. Six a.m.

"Are you alright sweetie?" Maddie couldn't help asking. Her son was often up and about at absurd times of night, but he was scowling into his coffee way more than usual, and his nightly adventures around the house tended to happen before three. Danny just nodded glumly. "Yeah. Just woke up too early and hit my foot."

Maddie absentmindedly patted his shoulder on her way to the sink. She didn't feel like washing the cup and despite showing bad example to her son, left it there unwashed and headed upstairs.

The night came, and Maddie was ready and prepared to spend all of it following the glowing dots on her ghost detector's screen. She had modified it some time ago so it should display Phantom's dot red instead of green, since he had a distinguishably different frequency than other ghosts. While this often made tracking him easier, the signature was closer to the background electromagnetic energy of the city power grid than any other ghost and Phantom seemed to use this to his advantage to disappear from her radar, sometimes completely without a trace. Maddie hoped Phantom would refrain from pulling his usual Houdini tonight.

She turned on her ghost radar as she stepped out of the front door, and as if her prayers had been answered, the red dot was circling a green one not even three blocks away. She quickly locked the door behind her and burst into a sprint towards the commotion she could hear already.

Two turns and equally many blocks further, there was Phantom in all his monochrome glory, taunting what looked like an anthropomorphous black mammoth. Maddie promptly decided to turn a deaf ear to whatever he would say to the mammoth ghost during the fight. Phantom's awful puns were even more famous than the grin Maddie had seen up close, and while there was a possibility of them giving her some insight on the ghost, willingly listening to Phantom's puns was not something she'd ever subject herself to. Instead, she kept a close eye on him the entire time he and the mammoth traded punches, crackling-with-energy ectobeams and –projectiles and unsurprisingly one-sided insults.

As the show went on almost directly Maddie's head, she had a front row seat. She rarely saw Phantom fight this close. All the times she had, she had joined in guns blazing trying to capture both ghosts, but she had to admit that watching the uninterrupted flow of two beings unbothered by the laws of physics fight was truly fascinating. Maddie only wished she'd brought her notepad with her.

There was a sudden halt in the fight. Both sides floated in place a few dozen feet above the otherwise empty street, facing each other. Had they been alive, Maddie would've bet they'd be panting heavily. As Maddie was expecting a full frontal attack from either or both sides, Phantom surprised her by instead speaking to the other ghost. Maddie almost tuned him out again before realizing he wasn't speaking English anymore. Come to think of it, nothing after the opening insults had been. Now she regretted not bringing the ghost gabber with her; despite the gadget's passive-aggressive 'personality' it was a useful tool.

Now the black mammoth was answering to Phantom, its voice low and guttural, and judging by the human-like ghost's reaction Maddie was sure they were back to insults, this time from both sides.

It was entertaining to watch even though the scientist could not understand the words. Phantom mimicked the mammoth's animalistic manners to add juice to his verbal blows, flashed his eyes, and flared his aura, before the mammoth suddenly shrunk back and zoomed over Maddie to the direction she had come from. A wave of panic washed through her: he children were in that direction. She turned around and was ready to sprint back as fast as her legs could carry her, but an echoing voice from behind her stopped her.

"Let her go, she's just going back to the Zone."

Maddie whipped back around to face the street behind her and almost head-butted Phantom, who had apparently been trying to put a gloved hand on her shoulder. She barely restrained herself from blasting the ghost in the face with the wrist ray she had taken with her.

"Phantom!" she gasped. "Never sneak up on a ghost hunter!"

Phantom merely smirked apologetically in return. "Never killed me before." he let out a small noise that might count as a laugh at his comment. "So, what's up? It's the second time you've not shot me on sight and last time you dragged me to your lab."

Maddie watched as the ghost flew in a slow circle around her, unnaturally large eyes glowing with curiosity. It was fascinating, the way his temper made a one-eighty from threatening to cat-like curiosity in a span of a few seconds.

"I'm here to 'drag you back'," she finally answered with air quotes after Phantom had circled her four times. "Our... conversation left me with almost more questions than answers."

Phantom stopped his circling her and struck a stereotypical thinking pose. "I could do that," he said almost to himself, "if we agreed on a truce. I don't shoot you, you don't shoot me kind of deal. Not that I shoot you anyways..." the ghost trailed off with a shrug. "I'll let you study me if you promise not to shoot or otherwise harm me. No experiments though, I hate those."

A truce with a ghost, not to mention the infamous and elusive Phantom? It might end badly, he was a ghost after all, but it would further their ghost research a lot if it worked out. Shooting had gotten her nowhere in almost five years. What the hell, she thought and nodded.

"So... Truce?" Phantom offered her his hand, its glove's white color pronounced by the ethereal white glow. Maddie looked up from the hand. Phantom was smiling. It wasn't the usual cheeky grin, but a genuine yet excited and determined smile, the row of his pearly white sharp teeth-nearing-fangs splitting his face in half. Maddie slowly took hold of the offered hand and manager to refrain from pulling it back as Phantom engulfed their handshake in green fire that didn't burn her hand, his excited smile widening beyond human capabilities. "Truce," she repeated, voice satisfyingly tremble-free. This was not how she had expected her ghost chase to go, but she would take what she could.


	2. Chapter 2

Phantom trailed after Maddie as she walked back home, the ethereal tail replacing his legs a long serpentine streak as he meandered lazily behind the scientist. His casualty unnerved Maddie slightly, because the ghost being so at ease around her meant she wasn't holding the gun anymore. Well, technically she was, since the ghost never carried any kind of weaponry save from the stolen Fenton thermos whereas she had a gun in a holster at her side, but she clearly didn't pose a significant threat to him and thus was not in control of the situation despite being in the lead. Phantom was.

As Maddie had reached the front door and was fumbling for her keys, she told Phantom to wait outside. She didn't want him inside her house this time despite the lab being logically the best place to interview the ghost again, since while it was definitely Maddie's home base and was full of things she could defend herself with if Phantom suddenly decided to throw his friendly persona out of the proverbial window, Phantom didn't find it intimidating in any way. And since the lab was what the specter was most likely expecting, throwing him off the loop with a different location might balance the field of power a little. Plus, she really didn't want him anywhere near her family, especially her son who had had a rough day and was clearly unsettled by the presence of ghosts in general.

She did a small detour to the lab though, grabbing a few devices she might need and an additional ectogun while she was at it and stuffed them in a dynamic backpack, and quickly scanned the hand she had shaken with Phantom for lingering possibly harmful ectoplasmic residue, finding none. After informing her husband she would be going back out for an unforeseeable amount of time, she returned outside where Phantom was still waiting for her, floating upside down.

"So where are we going for this?" the ghost asked, turning right side up as Maddie locked the door after her. "The park," she answered simply. "It's private enough for us to be left alone, public enough for you to not try any funny business."

Phantom snorted. "You're making this sound like a blind date."

Maddie lifted her eyebrow questioningly, and Phantom seemed to catch the small motion despite her goggles hiding it completely. The ghost just sighed and set towards the park, floating a foot off the ground and matching the human's walking speed. "You know, the whole 'don't trust strangers from the internet, meet only in public spaces', the dangers of online dating?" The ghost looked at Maddie expectantly. She just squinted back.

"And what does a ghost know about online dating?"

"What does a human? I'm dead, not from outer space. I know stuff." Phantom's spectral tail was flicking like an irritated cat's. "How about I carry you so we can get there faster?"

Maddie was taken aback by the suggestion of flying. She looked at the ghost as if he had grown a second head, which Maddie would've actually expected to be more likely. "Absolutely not. How could that be safe for me?"

Phantom rolled his eyes like the teenager he was under his ethereal white aura, which slightly pulsed around him to highlight the motion. "I'm not gonna drop you," he sighed, "and I could fly impractically low to protect you from vertigo." After a brief pause he added: "Think what you could learn from a first-hand experience on ghost aided flight."

Maddie couldn't deny her interest. "Alright, but the moment you try anything funny, I'll shoot you." She placed her hand on the holstered gun at her side for emphasis. Phantom just smirked. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Phantom grabbed her gently under her arms and lifted off the ground. As he turned invisible and extended the state to Maddie, she felt a cold sensation, not quite shiver but something similar to the heatless flame her hand had been engulfed in earlier. She made a mental note to write it down once she was safely back on the ground. As Phantom flew them towards the park by following roads, Maddie realized she felt no wind resistance of any kind, meaning she was not only invisible but intangible as well.

"Why are you following the roads when you could fly us directly there through buildings?"

Phantom looked down at her. "I thought you'd be more comfortable knowing where we are and seeing where we are going."

"Thoughtful," Maddie commented, "for a ghost."

Phantom sighed. "Could you drop the whole 'degrade all things non-human' -thing for a while? It's not very nice." Phantom took a left, and the park was clearly visible a few blocks away. "I get that the mostly non-corporeal ghosts you've been studying have limited thought patterns don't exactly meet human standards of 'intelligent', but we aren't all just mindless blobs trapped by instincts."

As they reached the park, Phantom let her down on a quiet stretch of grass surrounded by a few trees and turned visible himself. Maddie noted he was still frowning at her earlier comment. She almost adopted the 'disappointed mom'-pose to give the specter a piece of her mind, but decided against it and instead took her notepad out of her backpack and began to write down notes about the flight.

Phantom huffed at her lack of response and made frustrated flip in the air.

Maddie sat down on the grass and decided to veer the conversation elsewhere before Phantom could continue on the subject.

"So if you're not a mindless blob trapped by instincts, what are you?" Phantom turned towards her in the air with seal-like fluidity and blinked. "What do you mean?"

"You died in a portal correct?" Phantom nodded. "Somehow because of that, you have a dissimilar ectosignature, more superficial detail and power, and more complex thought patterns than other ghosts. I don't have any samples and I clearly won't be getting them now, so I have to ask: what in a portal death exactly makes you so different?"

Phantom looked uncomfortable. He lowered himself from his usual three to four feet sitting height to an inch or two above the grass, eye level with Maddie.

"I don't like to talk about it, but since we made that deal thing, I'm gonna tell you," the monochrome ghost began hesitantly. "When I... Died, the active ectoplasm from the portal soaked me through. Usually new ghosts form in the Ghost Zone where there's enough ectoplasm for them to form. I think I formed right there, inside my own burning body." Phantom paused for a moment to scratch the back of his neck. "I'm not sure whether I still have my former body fused in somewhere inside me as a ghost or was I just molded directly into my original human body. I've given this a thought or two over the last week since you asked me about my death."

Maddie was floored. She hadn't even considered the possibility of Phantom still having some remnants of a human body in him. As she thought about it, it was possible. She knew how much energy and ectoplasm starting and maintaining an interdimensional portal, even a small one, took, and what those amounts could do to a person. At least in theory. She would have to run tests on organic subjects as soon as possible.

As Maddie vigorously wrote notes, she took a notice on Phantom's anxious expression and decided to somewhat change the subject before the ghost boy would bolt away like a scared deer, which judging by his expression was a plausible possibility. Returning to a point she made during their last conversation, she asked: "So, if you were molded so directly to your original shape, why are your eyes so big?"

Phantom immediately stopped his anxious fiddling and snapped his electric gaze to Maddie.

"WOW. Way to be polite."

"I'm just curious."

"Yeah, whatever." Phantom rolled his eyes and rose a foot off the ground. "I actually have a reason for that." Maddie was honestly surprised to hear that he had an actual explanation. Phantom scratched his neck again. "When I first became a ghost, I honestly wasn't used to the lamp-eyes. I didn't see my reflection a whole lot, just the light from my eyes against things, so I got the image of these huge tarsius eyes. You know, those little fluffy nocturnal animals that have giant eyes and look like a cross between a toad and a bat?" Phantom made vague gestures at his eyes. "Of course they're not that big, but the feeling stuck."

Maddie made a note to look up tarsius later. Meanwhile, she decided to question Phantom's hazmat suit, which in structure seemed to be quite similar to her own, with the apparent lack of hood, goggles, visible pockets and, oddly enough, a zipper.

"Why doesn't your hazmat suit have a zipper?"

Phantom rolled his eyes at the human's question. "You just have to question everything, don't you?"

"Of course, I'm a scientist."

"Of course you are. And I do have a zipper, it's right here in the front." Maddie stared at Phantoms clearly zipperless chest and lifted an eyebrow since she was pretty sure the ghost could read her expression through her red-tinted goggles. She was proven right, as Phantom lifted an eyebrow of his own to match hers. "I do, it just follows ghost logic. It sort of appears when I need it. Here, I'll show you."

Phantom fingered the neckline of his suit and, true to his word, found a zipper there. Maddie watched as Phantom opened it to his solar plexus, revealing a black and cyan shirt. Maddie was astounded: even from several feet away she could see the shirt's fabric was more detailed than ghost clothes had any business being, and was not skintight enough to not show through a hazmat like Phantom's, meaning it was not constantly there much like the zipper. It was a secondary garment, only there on the rare occasions when Phantom opened his suit.

Phantom himself furrowed his brows as Maddie wrote everything down. She was paying him only minimal attention as he lifted the neck of his shirt and looked under it, but gave it fully as he suddenly gasped in surprise and recoiled back a foot or two. "What?" she asked the surprised ghost.

Phantom tore his eyes off his chest and looked directly at Maddie, making her squint at the brightness of his eyes. "It's... It's nothing. I just wasn't expecting to find this." The ghost pulled his neckline down and Maddie could see another, more form-fitting dull white and apparently sleeveless shirt underneath. Truly remarkable: a piece of clothing the ghost hadn't known to be there? Unheard of. Phantom's theory of there being real world matter in him was looking like a more and more probable explanation.

Phantom quickly zipped up his suit after that, the chest becoming smooth again as the zipper passed, leaving no evidence of its time keeping it open nor the shirts beneath it.

"Why do you have two shirts then?"

Phantom just glanced at her, shrugged, and made a non-committal noise.

Maddie felt she had drained the ghost's willingness to talk about his ectobiological oddities, and decided to change the subject yet again to keep him from flying off.

"So, what can you do ability-wise?" she asked, pen at the ready.

Phantom turned back to her from his mild sulking and lifted an eyebrow sarcastically. "Subtle," he commented. "But yeah, I can show you some stuff. Cool stuff."

With those words Phantom rose to four feet still in sitting position. "Remember that hand thing I did last time?" Maddie nodded. The ghost looked excited. "I've been practicing it. Now I can do this!"

Phantom shoved his legs in Maddie's direction, but as she watched, his feet's edges blurred and started to morph into...

...Another hands. Phantom had now four hands. As he happily wiggled his new fingers, Maddie noted his legs had assumed the bodily proportions of arms as well. While she was impressed by the level of control and imagination required to perform the trick, she was also extremely unimpressed. The scientist adopted her best 'unimpressed' face and looked at Phantom. The specter matched her gaze with his own electric one. "Don't look so unimpressed. This is totally cool and useful; I can carry way more stuff like this."

As Maddie continued to look utterly unimpressed, the ghost huffed and returned his legs and feet into their original shape. "And that's not the only cool thing I've been practicing. This isn't useful, as far as I know, but it's totally cool."

Maddie watched as Phantom spread his arms and closed his eyes in concentration, the ease of shooting him when he was not paying attention just a passing thought. He faded into invisibility, and Maddie was just about to take a leaf from the ghost's book and point out that invisibility was an old trick, when Phantom's eyes became visible again, along with a barely visible outline of his body. Then, one by one, came bones. Maddie was astounded. Ghosts didn't have bones. And while Phantom was definitely the most corporeal and human-biologically correct ghost, this shouldn't be possible.

Phantom had completed his skeleton and was now smirking at Maddie's expression of confusion and awe. She wasn't sure how he conveyed his expression as his face was currently lacking any kind of features capable of smirking, but smirking he was. "Cool, huh?"

Phantom's words shook her out of her trance. "How is that possible? You aren't supposed to have bones, how are you doing it?"

Phantom's skeleton shrugged. "Like I said, direct ectoplasmic imprint. I don't normally have bones, I think, but with enough concentration, I can just sort of make them appear." He waved his finger jestingly at Maddie. "And I had to study the human skeleton a lot for this. It's all about self-image, just as you said."

Maddie was gobsmacked. Phantom was not only capable of extensive and quick learning, a fact Maddie had become familiar with over the years hunting him, but he sought out specific information fitting his needs. Or in this case, for a trick with no useful purpose.

"Where would you get information like that?"

Phantom sighed and flickered back to complete visibility like a fluorescent light. "I already said that I'm dead, not from outer space. I have internet access, and the public library has a nice selection of anatomy books."

"You go to the library?"

"Not often, but sometimes. Something wrong with that?" Phantom crossed his arms and lifted an eyebrow.

"But you're a ghost."

"Yeah, and you're a human." The ghost waved his arms in frustration. "It's public library, available for all who live in Amity Park. Absolutely nowhere does it say it isn't open to those who after-live here too. I'm not bothering the living in there, and it's a part of my haunt. I see absolutely no reason I shouldn't go to the library."

Maddie was silent. The specter sulking in front of her did have a point. Except...

"Your haunt?" the scientist repeated in a questioning manner. Phantom's haunt was something neither Maddie nor Jack had figured out. The ghost didn't seem to have any particular place he stuck to, so finding out he had a haunt might be a key element to figuring him out.

"Yeah, you know, the entirety of Amity Park?" Phantom looked surprised she didn't know his chosen territory. "How did you not know that? It's obvious."

"Well, now that you mentioned it, sure." Maddie could almost feel the ghost's teenage attitude bleeding into her. "We never thought a ghost could claim such a big worldly haunt on their own. It's unsustainable."

Phantom smirked. "Well, I sure spend a lot of time looking after it, don't I?"

That... Would explain a lot. His constant fights with other ghosts, his apparent benevolence towards the humans living there. Phantom was a powerful ghost and had been able to keep his haunt in check for five years, and would probably continue to do so in the future. Maddie added exclamation marks to her notes. This was valuable information.

"So, if you protect your haunt, why do humans matter to you?"

Phantom's head turned straight towards her so fast that had he been human he'd surely have gotten a whiplash. He had a disbelieving look in his bright eyes. "You're kidding, right? The people in town make it worth looking after. Without them, it's just a bunch of buildings and empty houses clumped together. While I haunt the town, the people are what I'm haunting it for. I need to look after them. While you are good ghost hunters, it's my responsibility to protect you all from threats. It's my f..."

Phantom stopped his rant and clapped a hands over his mouth, as if to stop himself from saying anything more.

"Your what?" Maddie questioned. The ghost just shook his head and floated a few feet back. "Nothing. Just... Humans matter to me. Comparing to most ghosts in the Zone, I'm young. I know people here."

Maddie turned a new page on her notebook. "How old are you then?"

Phantom looked pensive. "Nineteen," he finally replied.

"I meant how long exactly have you been a ghost."

The specter in front of her merely shrugged.

Maddie observed the ghost's face again. Despite the glow and slightly green skin, he did seem the same age as her son, who was also nineteen. He even looked a bit like Danny, but then again, so did a lot of his peers with similar build. Maddie started her furious note-writing again, and was soon lost in thought. Phantom had wider shoulders than her son, whom she used as a mental image of an average sized almost-adult, and was otherwise stronger in build. In the rare moments she had seen Phantom standing on the ground instead of floating or flying, he held himself proudly and defiantly, as if challenging anyone in his line of sight to a fight with his posture. He was taller than her son, who might almost match the ghost in height if he ever straightened himself from his constant slouch.

Phantom was clearly getting impatient, as when Maddie looked at him from her notebook he was not only floating upside down, but also sporting a pair of legs in place of his arms. When he caught Maddie staring, he righted himself and returned his limbs to their original shape. "Are you quite done with that? I thought we were here to-"

His sentence was stopped by a small fit of coughs, as he accidentally swallowed a surprisingly solid puff of ectoplasmic fog that came out of his mouth as he needlessly inhaled.

"Sorry," the ghost directed his words to Maddie after his coughing had subsided. "I've got to take this."

With that, he shot upwards to the sky, where he was met with a gang of humanoid-shaped prehistoric mammals, the black mammoth from earlier in the lead.

"What? Couldn't handle me without your gang?" Phantom's taunt could be heard clearly even from the ground, and just as he finished his sentence a woolly rhino charged at him and threw him off balance.

Maddie smiled. She would have an excellent view of the soon-to-come events.

 **AN: I cannot guarantee any kind of constant schedule of chapter length, but there will be at least one more chapter.**


	3. Chapter 3

As Phantom hastily dodged the rhino, he backed right into the claws of what Maddie vaguely recognized as a smilodon, a saber-toothed lion. It took a hold of him with its claws and attempted to sink them into his shoulder, but the smaller ghost seemingly evaporated into a cloud of teal fog and flew through the feline's hold, only for it to clack its jaws together with a painful crunch and Phantom to rematerialize behind it.

Maddie turned page.

Phantom charged his foot with ecto-energy and kicked the smilodon hard in the general area of its butt, sending it flying sky high. The lion momentarily out of commission, two other animals charged at him. The human identified them as a cave bear and an aurochs, and noted that while all the animals had had a clearly humanoid shape when they arrived, they had 'reverted' into clearly more animalistic shapes.

As the duo of beasts that would never have worked together in nature drew near enough, Phantom simply dodged the bear, taking a hold of the aurochs' horns instead and spinning the animal over four times his size around him once before launching the angrily mooing creature after the bear, who had skidded to a halt and was ready to attack again. The two collided in a mass of black furry limbs and deadly sharp points, barely missing the woolly mammoth coming back from behind.

As the two untangled themselves, the smilodon had returned from its impromptu visit to the slight cover of clouds above Amity Park. The five members of Pleistocene megafauna (including a stocky wild horse that had yet to attack) regrouped. The mammoth, who clearly was the leader and like the four others had adopted a shape one would expect to see in ice age documentaries, shouted something at Phantom with its hoarse voice. Maddie rushed to dig the ghost gabber from her backpack, and almost missed Phantom's reply.

"You lot still after that? No way." Another shout, this time more demanding in its tone. "In your dreams. You'll never kick my ass with a team that small. And even if you did, I wouldn't do it."

Maddie lifted her eyebrows in surprise. The gang of ghosts wanted something from Phantom? Interesting.

As the megafauna glared at the self-proclaimed hero, another puff of fog came out of his mouth, this time unaccompanied by a fit of coughs. He ghost groaned, and Maddie barely caught his comment about 'jinxing it'. And, as if on cue, another group of animals flew to the scene, led by a majestic kind of green Irish elk and consisting of a wisent, a huge one-horned rhino and an animal that looked like a giant mutated armadillo. (Maddie was sure the last animal was mutated into its current shape during its time in the Ghost Zone, but when she later would look up prehistoric animals she would discover that indeed, it was a real animal called glyptodon and that the one-horned rhino was in fact called elasmotherium.)

The two groups joined, and the elk shrieked something at Phantom (who clearly rolled his eyes) with surprisingly high voice, almost like the whine of a charging ectogun. Maddie was very disappointed to find that while the ghost gabber cleared the elk's words into more understandable form, it didn't translate them into anything she would understand. She would have to tweak it a bit.

The cervid screeched again, and this time Phantom clearly flinched at the pitch before straightening his posture again and putting on an absolutely stubborn expression. "You want ice? Come and get it!" The teenage ghost made a daring motion with his hand, towarding it to the Irish elk with antlers so huge and wide Maddie was sure it had had to come through the portal sideways. The spectral beast let out a hollow call more fitting to its form, like someone groaning loudly into a tube of some kind, and rushed forwards.

Phantom dodged the charging elk with a twist that would have broken the spine of anything alive. As it sped past him, he grabbed a hold of its short tail stopping it dead on its tracks and covered it in ice. Now frozen solid, the elk fell from the sky towards Maddie. Phantom clearly noticed this as he yelled a quick "Watch out" to her. A soft green glow, softer than a charging ectoblast, covered his hand and he made an 'away' motion with it. To Maddie's surprise, she felt herself being lifted from the ground and whooshed a few feet back. The frozen elk crashed into the exact spot Maddie had been half a second earlier with a sickening crunch. One of its giant antlers broke off on the impact and the ghost animal was left helplessly lying on the ground, unable to move in or escape from its icy encasing.

Maddie looked down at herself just in time to see the faint green glow of ghostly possession fade away from around her. Phantom had saved her from getting crushed under an unidentifiable weight of the enormous ghost elk, even though she wouldn't have even been in danger if it wasn't for him. The ghost seemed to be very serious about looking after the humans of his haunt.

In the human-like ghost's moment of saving the scientist from getting crushed, the elasmotherium had circled around him and gained speed. Now was Maddie's turn to yell a warning, and Phantom spun around just in time for the megafauna to smash right into him horn first, proverbially sweeping him off his feet, as he was in the air and his legs were currently replaced by a spectral tail. The crude unicorn threw Phantom towards the glyptodon who in turn was preparing to bat the smaller ghost forward with its heavy tail in an unorthodox game of ping-pong, but he righted himself and halted his flight in time, and the unholy armadillo's tail swept only air.

The animals regrouped again, and with the mammoth in the lead, charged all at once. Phantom easily dodged the singular attack, but as each ghost started chasing him on their own, the cave bear got a few scratches in and the horse managed to bite his tail, which luckily wasn't nearly as solid as the rest of his body.

Maddie was confused. Why was Phantom, who according to their research, several videos, reports, and a countless amount of witnesses was capable of leveling skyscrapers with a single attack, merely toying with the ghosts who despite their probable age were below the average power of the town's most attackers?

The mammoth made a desperate grab at Phantom with its trunk but missed. In frustration, it sneezed an ectoblast at the smaller ghost, nailing him in the back. The shot specter whipped around at whiplash speeds, reformed his legs and slammed a boot into the creature's furry forehead, sending it crashing to a sandy road below. The mammoth was soon almost back up, but Phantom froze it to a block of ethereal ice before it could fling another blast at him.

The other ghost animals halted for a second, both their leaders encased in a translucent prison for the time being. Phantom turned to them with his usual smirk. "Who else wants a piece of me?" He shouted at them with a challenging shrug.

The two rhinoceri responded to his dare with hollow trashcan-like calls and charged. They were fast compared to their size, but able to move to every possible direction, Phantom easily dodged the two. It was fascinating to watch as the two horn heads ran in the air as if they were running on the ground an skidded in tight turns. The ghost teen used their slower turns to his advantage, and threw a ball of cryikinetic energy at the duo, freezing them together. The frozen rhinoceri fell down almost on top of the mammoth and cracked apart in the middle, creating two smaller one rhino sized clumps.

If Maddie had to guess, she'd say the mammoth was the only one able to use weaponized ecto-energy in fights.

The animals still left shifted uncomfortably. Phantom whipped his gaze from the fallen ghosts and to the floating ones. Maddie could see even from the ground that his eyes were blazing an angry swimming pool blue, and the color was quickly flowing into his aura. Still glaring at the other ghosts, he let it flash around him once in a blinding and chilling explosion. The scientist could feel not only the chill of the cryogenic aura digging into her very being, but the emotion within it as well that Maddie could only identify as 'go away'.

The mismatched herd scattered, all of its members clearly trying to get away from the situation yet somewhat unwilling to leave, probably either because of whatever reason they had come or the fallen members they were unwilling to leave behind.

Finally, the smilodon got a hold of itself and reverted back to a more humanoid shape and flew down towards the fallen elk, its flight panicked and anxious. Maddie backed away as it came close, but it paid her no heed and proceeded to haul the frozen elk up on its shoulders, taking the off-broken antler with it. The rest followed its example and flew down to the mammoth and rhinoceri.

The fight was over, and Maddie let herself relax her shoulders which had been tensed during the clash of ghosts.

"Why didn't you fight them?" The human questioned as Phantom floated back down while the still unfrozen members of the Pleistocene gang dragged the not-so-lucky ones back into the general direction of Fentonworks, a fact that greatly troubled Maddie but which she had learned quickly to tolerate.

"What do you mean?" The ghost was confused. "I most certainly kicked their asses and you were standing right there watching the whole thing."

"Yes, but our studies and most footage of you show you'd have the power to disintegrate them. Why didn't you?" This question could open a door to the ghost's mind, and Maddie was waiting like a famished wolf to get a piece of it. Jazz clearly was onto something with her ghost psychology.

Phantom was openly gaping at her. "Maddie, that's horrible. I'd never do something like that."

"They were attacking your haunt."

"No, they were attacking me. And they only were in my haunt because I very rarely leave Amity Park."

"That still doesn't explain why you were only playing around with them."

Phantom's eyes were glowing with clear frustration as he glared at Maddie. "I know I'm somewhat territorial and nobody likes to be attacked, but ending someone's afterlife isn't worth it." Maddie tightened her grip of the notepad on her hands; the ghost was about to rant. "Killing someone you find inconvenient is just wrong. It's no different just 'cause I'm a ghost. Like, I know I have more skill to, but so do you since you're a really good martial artist but you don't kill people that annoy you. True, my thought process is closer to a human's that most ghosts, but that doesn't make it any different! I just-"

Phantom was fuming, and Maddie was regretting bringing up the topic. His eyes were blazing and his hair was beginning to stand up like it was electrified. Just as Maddie was about to either take out the weapon at her side or make a run for it, Phantom closed his eyes and took several calming breaths. His hair came down and when he opened his eyes they were back to their normal levels of luminescence.

"Sorry about that," the ghost muttered. "Won't happen again. That's just a touchy subject, you know, morality and all."

He floated even lower adopting a cross-legged sitting position, until he was so low the human couldn't tell whether he was sitting on the grass below or floating an inch above it. He made a gesture with his hand urging Maddie to sit down as well, which she did, albeit hesitantly.

The ghost in front of her leaned his head on his hand and sighed. "Sorry again about that. I just... I don't want to hurt them." He nodded his head towards the portal and sighed again like a parent trying to calm down to explain to their child why pushing others into water puddles is wrong. "I protect. That's what I do. Mostly the beings living in my haunt, human and other, but ghosts as well." Maddie was about to say how stupid that sounded given the ghost's track record with others of his kind, but he raised his finger before she could interrupt. "No, hear me out. I know it sounds strange, but I do protect other ghosts as well as humans. It's not as obvious since most of the ghosts that come through the portal are following an obsession or instinct harmful to the town and/or me, but I'm not going out on my way to harm them. I try to match my power during fights to the opponent's, even though a display of power might discourage them from coming to hurt me again, 'cause it's fair. It might get my ass kicked on a weekly basis, but I really don't want to hurt my opponents any more than necessary."

He changed the hand his head was leaning on. "In the case of that Pleistocene band of animals I could, as you said, 'disintegrate them' if I wanted to. Which I don't, obviously. Beating them down to near goo would make sure they never set a hoof on the human world again, but that would break them on the inside." Phantom straightened himself in his sitting position and placed his hand firmly over where his heart had been.

"Those ghosts have a story. They're just as old as their appearance would suggest even if their power, or rather lack of it, says otherwise. They were stronger once, when they had been dead less than a millennium and the Ice Age was at its prime. They took pride in looking at their living kind, seeing them in the vast plains and forests and mountains, and struggling through harsh weather. It was awful for them to see their 'kingdom' fall and for humans to claim the land of their kind after the weather got warmer.

"Most animal ghosts don't have a clear obsession. Animals are simpler in life and similarly simpler in death, with an exception every now and then. Those guys aren't exactly one, but the era of megafauna like them was an important thing to them, and when the climate changed they were devastated. Ice Age was their thing and with it gone, they lost the majority of their power and never got it back. They're old and bitter, like those really old people who sit around in their wheelchairs and reminisce together 'how the 30's were good and how nowadays youngsters are hooligans'.

"And that's kind of why they come after me. It's common knowledge that I have strong cryokinesis, stronger than any other ghost conveniently available in the Zone since I stay in one place, and every ghost knows of Amity Park." Phantom paused for a little while and rubbed the back of his neck. "They want me to freeze the world and bring about a new Ice Age. I'm pretty sure I'd have the power to do it even though I won't. If I don't kick their asses too bad when they come to fight me, they'll just come back to haunt me later, but it won't discourage them. The possibility of a new Ice Age, even in the form of a stubborn cryogenic ghost who likes the world as it is, keeps them going. If I don't overpower them too badly, they can afterlive in hope to corner me and get me to do it. So in a way I'm protecting them, even if it is from the reality."

Whatever story Maddie had expected to hear, it wasn't this. She would take it gladly, of course; it gave even more insight to the boy's personality than she'd hoped. And who would have expected so complex logic from a ghost? The scientist was running out of page to write on and was forced to turn it mid-sentence. To her disappointment, she found the notepad had only one page left, as it was not a big one and Maddie had been writing in such a hurry her handwriting was big and messy. She sighed and wrote down her last thoughts calmly and as tiny as she could manage, but soon the last page was filled as well.

The scientist picked herself up from the grass and dusted off any loose bits of dirt and blades of grass that had clung to her jumpsuit. Phantom looked at her with curiosity in his eyes and gently floated up to be eye level with her.

"My notepad's full," she told the expectant ghost. "I guess this is it for the night. I'll have to hunt you down again someday."

Phantom abandoned his legs and formed a spectral tail, grinning. "That's fine. You know how to find me." Maddie decided to not mention the ghost's apparent ability to completely disappear from their grid if he wanted to. The ghost offered her his elbow in a gentlemanly manner. "Going my way?" he asked, tilting his head to the direction of Fentonworks.

Maddie accepted his offer of being carried with less hesitancy than last time; after all, it hadn't been bad at all. She almost smiled when the ghost lifted her off the ground and carried gently back the same route he brought her.

"I'll be looking forwards to our next conversation then," Phantom said as he set Maddie down in front of her house's door and returned her visibility and tangibility. Before she could reply in any way, the ghost saluted her and sunk down through the ground, all the while grinning from ear to ear.

Maddie stood there at the front door for a while before going in, surprised by the ghost's sudden departure.

As she closed the door behind her, she glanced at the clock on the wall; she had been away for two hours. Somehow it had felt longer than that, but Maddie wasn't complaining. She'd have more time to sleep before having to make breakfast for her family, since tomorrow -or rather, today- would be her turn to make sure everyone got a good start on the day.

She could make pancakes, her son loved those.

 **AN: Sorry for the wait, I had no motivation. But hey, It's finished! I have one more continuation story planned (sort of) and I will try my best to do it, but no promises of when it'll be done.**


End file.
